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Appel à contribution – Scientific Writings from the Ancient and Medieval World

Scientific Writings from the Ancient and Medieval World
Series Editor: John Steele

Series description

Scientific texts provide our main source for understanding the history of science in the ancient and medieval world. The aim of this series is to provide clear and accurate English translations of key scientific texts accompanied by up-to-date commentaries dealing with both textual and scientific aspects of the works and accessible contextual introductions setting the works within the broader history of ancient science. In doing so, the series will make these works accessible to scholars and students in a variety of disciplines including history of science, the sciences, and history (including Classics, Assyriology, East Asian Studies, Near Eastern Studies and Indology). Thus, the series will be of use both in the teaching of history and the history of science and for researchers on ancient science. In addition, the series will provide a venue for the publication of original research on early scientific texts, in particular through the commentaries.

Texts will be included from all branches of early science including astronomy, mathematics, medicine, biology, and physics, and which are written in a range of ancient languages including Akkadian, Arabic, Chinese, Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit. Priority will be given to the publication of texts which have either not previously been translated into English or where the existing translation and/or commentary has been rendered significantly out of date by more recent research.

Each volume will be devoted to a particular text and will contain the following elements:

1. An extensive introduction (ca. 20,000 words) to the text, its author, and its place in the history of science. This introduction will also include discussion of the sources in which the text is preserved. The introduction should be accessible to readers from outside the discipline.

2. An edition of the text. (To be omitted if there already exists a standard edition on which the translation is based.)

3. English translation of the text.

4. Commentary. The commentary will include both textual and scientific aspects.

Please email John Steele (Professor and Chair, Department of Egyptology and Assyriology, Brown University) at john_steele@brown.edu if you would like any further information about the series or if you are interested in contributing.

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Appel à contribution – Late antique hagiography as literature

Call for papers: late antique hagiography as literature
Colloquium at the University of Edinburgh, 20th-21st May 2015

Texts about ‘holy’ women and men grew to be a defining feature of the culture of Late Antiquity. There is currently an increasing interest among scholars from different disciplines (history, theology, languages, and literature) in these hagiographical writings. But more can be done to find ways to systematise our understanding of the literary affiliations, strategies and goals of these extraordinarily varied texts, which range from the prosaic and anonymous narrations of the martyr passions to the Classicising poems of Paulinus of Nola and the rhetorically accomplished sermons of John Chrysostom.

This colloquium is designed to bring together students and scholars working on a range of aspects of literary hagiography, to share insights, and to consider approaches for the future. We hope to situate late antique biographical production in relation to Classical literary sensibilities, as well as considering non-classical influences, and thus to identify areas of continuity and gradual development as well as areas of abrupt change in the form and function of such literature. While our emphasis is deliberately literary, historical and theological questions which feed into the significance of these works should not be ignored.

 We understand ‘hagiography’ in the non-technical sense of ‘writings about (the lives of) saints’. The concept of ‘saints’, likewise, is here taken in a broad way to mean remarkable and exemplary Christian figures (whether real or fictional); the field is not restricted to those who at some point were officially canonised by the Church. This colloquium is seeking to explore issues like the following:

 * The definition of sainthood, e.g. through comparisons with texts about non-Christian saint-like figures (the ‘pagan martyrs’, Apollonius of Tyana).

* The portrayal of a saint in different texts; how are saints portrayed in their own writings compared to those of other authors about them?

* Characterisation, e.g. individuality and stereotyping: to what extent can a reader empathise or identify with a saint?

* Life imitating hagiography and resulting problems.

* What can hagiography tell us about non-elite ‘popular’ literary culture?

* How have different genres given shape to hagiographical texts (from Damasus’ epigrams to the epic poems of Fortunatus and Paulinus of Périgeux), as well as texts resisting generic categorisation? E.g. is the so called Life of Malchus a vita or a diegesis?

* Intertextuality as an aesthetic and ideological strategy.

* The emergence of stable hagiographical conventions, whose influence grew so powerful that it is often difficult to distinguish one saint from another.

* What, if anything, can hagiography learn from panegyric?

* Literary approaches to un-saintly behaviour (trickery, committing suicide, etc.) of saints.

* To what extent does a text’s rhetorical purpose undermine the author’s credibility as an honest record-keeper?

* Assessing the historicity of hagiographical texts.

* Transmission and textual problems of hagiographical texts.

* Reception and changes in the perception of authority (e.g. saints who wrote about saints, such as John Chrysostom and Augustine).

Proposals for 25-minute papers, in the form of abstracts between 200 and 400 words in length, should be submitted to Thomas Tsartsidis (T.Tsartsidis@sms.ed.ac.uk) or Christa Gray (christa.gray@gla.ac.uk) by 15th January 2015.

Postgraduate students are particularly encouraged to contribute to this event.